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I know a bit of Chinese and I was just wondering if Japanese had the same tones, or anything like tones for that matter, and if it does, is it as important is in chinese (One wrong tone can be the difference between the number 4 and dead) And the thought of learning and memorizing 2-4 MORE tones is scary.
Thank you!
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This topic was modified 12 years, 4 months ago by
4saken.
No
Nothing of the sort. It’s like English- if you’re from Boston, you don’t speak the same way as somebody from Texas. Tone depends largely on region and the individuals voice.
Japanese doesn’t use tones. It’s not like Mandarin or Cantonese where using different tones changes the meaning of a word.
You can however ask a question by raising your tone. eg. He went outside. If you say that normally your stating something. If you raise your tone, it can sound like your asking a question eg. He went outside?
It has a pitch accent, each syllable can have a high or low tone. You’ll learn this as you learn to pronunciate words, so you can forget it exists unless you are linguistically declined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_accent
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This reply was modified 12 years, 4 months ago by
Good point kanjiman, I’d not thought of that! You can cut out the “ka” part of the sentence of you raise your tone, also.
AnonymousIt doesn’t use tones like Chinese, but my Japanese friend from Tokyo told me certain syllables may be stressed over others. For example, 日本 would have the stress on 本 to be ‘ni-HON’, but 二本 would have stress on 二 as ‘NI-hon.’
Yeah, from what I’ve heard so far it has tones only as much as English does. Like in English you don’t use the same tone of voice when you ask a question as you do when you make a statement even if the words being said are identical.
Words in English are also full of weird pronunciations with different emphasis on certain parts. There are still plenty of times when I mispronounce English words when I should know better. <.<
Seriously, bologna is pronounced "balonee"? I know it's an Italian word but that just seems so…off.
Or what about "toMAYto" versus "toMAHto"?-
This reply was modified 12 years, 4 months ago by
Clement.
Clement:
Seriously, bologna is pronounced “balonee”? I know it’s an Italian word but that just seems so…off.Not to get too offtop, but one could say it is “off” as in Italian it’d be pronounced more like “bo-lo-nya”. I honestly don’t know how that word managed to morph into “balonee” in English, but such is language!
As for tones, I’ve always considered it a godsend that Japanese is one of the few East Asian languages without tones. That only makes it that much easier to learn. I once toyed with the idea of learning Chinese, but the tones was what threw me off that notion.
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This reply was modified 12 years, 4 months ago by
Gigatron.
England was invaded many times and every invader had to bring a new way to say things, the most linguistically significant invasion was in 1066 when the normans who were vikings who had lived in north france for 90 years came over and invaded bringing a fair bit of french, in fact about 60% of english comes from french, and if theres a stupid pronunciation in English its because it’s french.
French being a romance language it has ties to other romance languages e.g. italian etc.
But don’t forget english people sometimes pronunciate words weirdly because they are silly.
like herbs pronounced as ‘erbs,
Bonus trivia! I now speak English like I’m speaking Japanese, apparently when I spell my name its hard to tell if I say b or v. And everyone asks where I got such a strange accent from. God knows what my r/l’s are like.
I guess I speak Japanese more often than English, even if its just practicing. Though it probably is more than I don’t speak much English than lots of Japanese.
冬 Japanese!
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This topic was modified 12 years, 4 months ago by
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